


Made

by OrilliaOrange



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Gen, Mass Effect - Freeform, Mass Effect 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-04
Updated: 2016-03-04
Packaged: 2018-05-24 15:08:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6157603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrilliaOrange/pseuds/OrilliaOrange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shepard was made. No matter what Jacob and Miranda and the Illusive Man say about resurrection. She knows who Lazarus was. She isn't him. She isn't herself either. This krogan was made, just like her. He had as much of a choice as she did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Made

Shepard stares up at the krogan floating listlessly in the tank.

_you were just meat and tubes_

It isn't right. Whatever happens afterward will happen, but she can't just leave him.

Shepard was made. No matter what Jacob and Miranda and the Illusive Man say about resurrection. She knows who Lazarus was. She isn't him. She isn't herself either. This krogan was made, just like her. He had as much of a choice as she did. 

Shepard hits the tank release. 

She has enough time to register surprise before the krogan slams her up against the wall, forearm grinding into her throat. 

He has blue eyes. Has she ever seen a blue eyed krogan? It's off-putting. 

The krogan snarls at her. Teeth bared. 

Shepard’s face pulls into an identical expression. If anyone came into the cargo hold right now, they'd think she was mad. Rather, this is the first time Shepard can remember feeling normal. 

“I can give you enemies to fight,” she says. 

The krogan’s eyes fire up. 

Grunt. He is _Grunt_ , and they are _kin_. Shepard knows it, more truly than she knows her own name. They are made, and they will make themselves. 

***

Nothing has ever felt more right than fighting, and Shepard knows herself enough to know that that’s wrong. She never loved the rush before, not like this. She wipes blood from her helmet, smearing the world red, in time to see Grunt stomp a Collector into the dirt. 

Fucking hell she adores this tank born krogan. It’s probably-

Grunt laughs, that stupid “heh heh heh” that reminds her so much of Wrex-

Scratch that, it’s very clear she’s fucked up. Whatever Cerberus brought back, it wasn’t Commander Shepard. It shouldn’t be endearing, watching Grunt laugh while he’s ankle deep in a corpse. But it was a good fight, and that makes a difference, somehow. 

Jacob’s eyes burn into her back, an uncomfortable heat she’s all too familiar with. He thinks there’s something wrong. Miranda looks at her the same way, but colder. Shepard feels uncannily like she’s being dissected. Like if Miranda stares hard enough, she’ll find and excise whatever it is that’s warped her perfect creation. Shepard wonders if Miranda considers them somehow similar, since Miranda herself is a perversion of nature, just like Shepard and Grunt. They aren’t, and Miranda should’ve known better. Of everyone in the galaxy, Miranda should have _known_. 

Grunt knows. He knows you shouldn’t build a person just because you can. But he knows how to be a person, and most of all, how to be himself. In the aftermath of the Lazarus project, Shepard finds that comforting. 

It helps that Grunt doesn’t mind her new taste for violence. He has never known a different Shepard. To him, there is only the human who released him from the tank and promised him a life. 

Very, very slowly, Shepard begins to feel like herself. 

By the time they spring Jack from prison, Shepard fits into her skin the way she was meant to. 

It occurs to her, part way through hauling Jack’s ass through the Normandy’s airlock, that Jack too is made. 

There’s something funny about it all. Shepard can’t quite put her finger on what it is.

***

Jack comes with her and Grunt on ground missions. There’s freedom in the sizzle of biotics and gunfire. 

Things are fine, until Omega. 

Garrus remembers her. Remembers Commander Shepard the first Human Spectre, the woman who believed in a low ranking turian C-Sec officer who thought he could fight the whole damn Council on his own. That Shepard died. Standing in front of an exhausted, disillusioned Garrus, Shepard feels fake again. Not for the first time, she wishes things had been different. Wishes the Normandy hadn’t blown up, that her oxygen line hadn’t torn. That she was the right Shepard. 

Later, she wonders how the first Shepard would’ve felt about Garrus bleeding out in her lap, waiting for the shuttle to pick them up and wondering if Miranda could work another miracle. 

Garrus doesn’t come with her on ground missions. Instead, Shepard keeps Grunt at her back, and Jack who doesn’t expect better from her, who doesn’t look at her and see someone who died. 

She is not a corpse. 

***

Grunt’s head bounces off the heavy duty glass window in the cargo bay. Shepard can feel his confusion in her bones, secretly fears that maybe he was made wrong, that Okeer fucked up somewhere, and she will not be able to fix it.

When they land on Tuchanka, Shepard flouts habit, and brings Garrus with her. If she pretends to be the right Shepard, maybe Wrex will be more willing to help her, to help Grunt. The previous Shepard always kept Garrus at her six, and Wrex will remember.

Finding him leader of clan Urdnot is the least surprising revelation since she woke up.

Grunt going through the krogan version of puberty is the most surprising. 

She laughs, long and clear and most of all, relieved. 

It is only puberty. 

***

The dust clears. The bitter metal of the Thresher Maw’s blood reeks, but they have won. Grunt is an adult and Shepard feels cleansed.

That’s probably wrong too. The Rite was for Grunt, not her. But the feeling remains, swelling in her chest and fizzing through her veins. Even Gatatog Uvenk’s foolishness cannot bring her down from this new height. 

They will be fine. 

She is Shepard. 

**Author's Note:**

> My first Mass Effect fic! Thank you for reading!


End file.
